VIVA CELL TOWERS, SCHOOL CHOICE

We won’t take sides in the endless cell tower debates, other than to point out that we need towers if we want smartphones, and that many careful, reputable studies have failed to find health problems from exposures to microwave radiation at levels approved by the Federal Communications Commission.

Yet we won’t hesitate to side with school choice, and the rights of parents to become deeply involved in the operation of publicly funded schools.

Thus we celebrate the freedom of the Encinitas parents who have removed 10 children from a charter school after becoming concerned about the presence of two cellphone antenna installations nearby.

As reported by the U-T’s Gary Warth, school officials endorse the choices that made their enterprise possible: “If parents are not comfortable with their children at the site because of the cell towers, they are more than welcome to remove their children to put them in a school or campus that is ‘safer,’ as far as they are concerned,” said Jennifer Cauzza, the executive director of Julian Charter School, which runs the Innovation Centre Encinitas.

Despite resistance from teachers unions and administrators, competition from charter schools is improving education for children throughout the nation. Key to that success is giving parents options, particularly the decision to vote with their kids’ feet.